Staff crunch hits functioning of aided schools in city

Ajay Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, May 17

Sain Das School, that once produced eminent personalities including top bureaucrats and several politicians, is now reeling under a grave problem. Not only this school, several other similar government-aided schools in the district are in a dire state due to the shortage of teachers and administrative staff.

Notably, these schools have a huge strength of children belonging to downtrodden sections of society including those belonging to the families of street vendors, rickshaw pullers, children of widows, migrants and below poverty line families. Teachers in the school are worried that if the current imbalance of students and teachers continues, then the these schools will have to be shut down.

Sudeep Jain, a senior secondary teacher at Sain Das School said, since 2003 the recruitment of teachers has completely ceased and currently the strength of teachers has declined from 145 to just 30.

He alleged that the government has put a complete ban on the recruitment of new teachers under covered posts at the aided schools. There is not even a permanent post for the principal, he added.

Earlier, the 95 per cent of the financial management of these aided schools was reportedly handled by the government and 5 per cent by the private management bodies. But after the amendment in the recruitment policy, 70 per cent charge is with government and 30 per cent is with the private management, hence they have also refused to provide any kind of fund for the enrolment of new teachers.

To prevent the children from leaving the school, the senior teachers are forced to hire contractual teachers on lesser wages. Maneesh Agarwal, a teacher at Doaba Khalsa School said, in his school, every year a downfall in number of students has been occurring due to insufficient staff.